CHAPTER VI
We drifted about ninety miles S.W. in the three days’ storm, S.W. of Norway, and now are just the same distance from Lerwick as when we started.
Nine watches with the engine going will take us there.
It is blue and sunny to-day, wind N.E., so we have set staysail and mainsail and go along in a real sailing-ship style.
But the old sea still runs high from N.W. and the wind blows little ripples down the long furrows, and the lumpy waves stop our way down to four or five knots.
In smoother water and with all hands free we would get a jib and topsail on; meantime we want the engine to work.
At night the blasts became gradually less furious and the seas less precipitous.
At two-forty as I write, rolling along through lumpy blue sea at four knots, the engineer lets on the air all have been labouring at, clash goes the engine, subsiding into its steady business-like stroke, and away we ramp; cheers from some of us. The St Ebba vindicates itself.
How our feelings are changed! “How is the air pressure?” is a question which will be poked at the engineers for many a fine day to come; and they will take care, sick or not sick, never again to let it run out. We surely do twelve knots with sails drawing and engine running. The log line will soon show....
We run all afternoon finely—sails, wind and motor—till the wind heads us and the foresail comes down, and we roll, roll as I think only a whaler can roll, and the expression on faces changes. But our engineer—mechanicien, we call him—is now no more sick and has the engine going, and is washed and is as spry as usual again.
Evening meal comes (aften-mad) with ship’s provender, which is not bad, and what is called tea in Norway; and the surges come over our bow and we sit in the tiny galley, Henriksen, styrmand, mechanicien and myself, and St Ebba rolls dishes, pots and pans all about. But what care we, reeling off eight to nine knots against wind with little or no water in our waist; an ordinary tramp at three knots against the same tumble of sea would be half under water.
Night falls, the Plough lights up, and our pole mast and crow’s nest and steamer light go swinging against it.
We ought to sight Fair Isle and Sumburgh Light and Bressay Light, Lerwick, to-night about twelve. The breeze is northerly and for these parts the air is clear and chilly and bracing, giving the energy of the northern electrical condition that we cannot explain but which we know does exist.
We overhauled all our charts this morning in the little cabin after marking our position—a pleasing pastime; charts are better pictures than the most valued engravings if you have fancy enough to see coral islands and waving palms where are only copper-plate engraved lines. Our Arctic charts we roll away in the very centre of our other charts, for alas, we are now months too late for Davis Straits: the polar bears and white whales and Arctic poppies and the bees humming in the white heather we must visit some other time. These are the happy regions the old whalers speak of with glistening eyes as they recall the joys, the hauls of salmon in nets, the reindeer flesh, and the Right whale hunting. No, no long sunny nights for us this journey. Possibly there will be room for some such description further on in this book, perhaps of whaling and sealing by the light of the midnight sun in the Antarctic or the Arctic.
We must make the best of this northern latitude and get braced up a little with Shetland, which is astonishingly bracing, before going south again. A dip into its cold, salt, crystalline water as you get out of bed is a better tonic than quinine for fever; and against the grey skies and grey houses of Lerwick and its pale, yellow-haired and kindly people we will picture before us the blue of the south, say the hot side of Madeira with the brown, bare-legged grape-pickers, the sugar cane and the deep blue sea or the hot volcanic dust and fruit at the Azores, the Canaries and Cape Verde, and the hunting and waiting for the cachalot or sperm, small game for our big harpoon, but worth much money.
Perhaps we may have a chance down there of Tunny Bonita Sharks and flying fish to put in our bag, and possibly even a turtle.
Fair Isle flashes N.W. at eight-twelve P.M., then Sumburgh Head.
We have been doing eight knots with the wind against us, consuming two tons of oil, from Tonsberg to Shetland, which would have taken sixteen tons of coal.
Then Bressay Light red and white, the night hazy, wind going to S.W. As we come into lee of the island we slow down to three miles an hour, for Lerwick and its light on Bressay Island are only a few miles off and—well, it is just as good fun going into harbour by daylight—so we go slow and the St Ebba’s engines start a new chant. This music of our engine we hear sometimes, and do not quite understand. And now Henriksen hears the music; we lean over the bridge in heavy coats in “the black dark and feen rain,” as he calls it, and he hears the singing. Yes, at “Slow” we have the full chorus of voices coming up from the engine-room into the silent night, the general theme a chant, of young voices repeating musically the creed, these change to sopranos, and interludes of deeper women’s voices speaking low-toned instructions—then all united! It is just as if we stood at the entrance of some Gothic cathedral at night.
But I leave the fascination of deck and “feen rain and black dark” plus cathedral music to Henriksen and light the midnight oil, and Henriksen hangs on to Mousa green light and dodges fishermen’s nets and boats, and in the grey morning tells me it blew up from sou’-west and got very cold.
I was not the least aware of above, as we slipped into Lerwick at five, but yesterday’s rapid rise of glass promised as much.
Lerwick at five A.M. in the morning in summer is the same as at any other hour in the twenty-four; it is always light and grey. Green fields and low peaty hills lie behind grey stone houses, and the grey clouds hang low on the hills. The sea-water is grey-green. You might call the houses a sort of lilac-grey, to be flattering. One or two of them painted white and a black steamer or two on their sea-front give relief to the greyness, and the white steam from their banked fires gives a slight sense of life and joins the grey below to the grey above. Always Lerwick seems instinct with this sense of coming life; here it always seems to be on the point of dawn or beginning of twilight.
Not all the herring-boats, herring men and herring women that congregate here in summer, not even the most brilliant blue summer day, can do away with this twilight; people and boats come and go but Lerwick preserves the same pleasing grey expression of quiet reserve.
To let you into the secret, Lerwick and the Shetlands are slightly anæmic! The best blood of several countries has been flowing into the islands for ages, yet always intelligence remains in excess of physical vigour, always the Scots and Norse say: “Let us go and make use of these islands.” “Look at the wealth there is there of sea-fish and sea-birds,” says the Norseman, “give me one little island there and I will envy no man.” But they forget their starting-points are lands of assured summer, where trees grow (and, for Norsemen, where wild fruit ripens), and they come, and have come, conquering or peacefully hunting, catching sea-trout, whales or herring, and either go away again, or stay, and become like the islanders anæmic, and slightly socialistic, and lose the sense of industrial enterprise, and other people come and take the herring and whales and sea-trout from their doors.
It is greatly a matter of geographical position and climatic conditions. The one tree that grows on the islands could tell you this if you could hear it speak to you of its struggle for existence.